


first female ever on the team, what!

by megabeccaw



Category: Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: Gen, Mathlete Cady, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, au where cady joins the mathletes from the start, basically she has math right before lunch so no one warns her off before she meets kevin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-18 08:43:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14849516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megabeccaw/pseuds/megabeccaw
Summary: "Math was something she knew, something she was good at - it would be a much-needed break from all of these confusing new rules and terms that everyone knew but her."Or, the one where Cady joins the Mathletes on her first day of high school.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! this is my first venture into writing for the mean girls fandom, so i'm really hoping chapter one turned out alright. it's musical based, so it might have a few movie references, but not much. hopefully it's not super ooc
> 
> this fic is an au where there's an ap calc class right before lunch, which works better with cady and kevin's class schedules better than the one after lunch, so they're in that period instead of the same one as the other mathletes and aaron. with no new friends from lunch to keep her away and no cute boys in front of her to distract her, cady is of course drawn to mathletes immediately
> 
> this whole idea started with me thinking "man it would've been so much less messy for cady if no one told her mathletes were social suicide" and grew into something real when i went through the mean girls musical collection on here and found that there weren't any fics with the mathletes soooo here we are

Cady was not having a good day.

American school was _nothing_ like she expected - there were skateboards and Starbucks cups being carried around, yes, but everyone was so much… colder. She had spent the entire day so far trying to find her place here but it seemed like no one was willing to even give her a chance. Plus, not _one person_ had started rapping around her so far, which just added on to her disappointment.

On the bright side, her homeroom teacher seemed nice enough, and she was even excited about Cady’s love of math!

Speaking of math, Cady stomach was full of nervous-excited butterflies as she walked toward her next class. Math was something she knew, something she was good at - it would be a much-needed break from all of these confusing new rules and terms that everyone but her knew. A part of her was worried, though. What if this alien way of life took this away from her too? What if math wasn’t the same here, or she was too far behind or ahead and her classmates looked down on her for this too?

She wasn’t sure if she could handle losing math, not when it felt like that was all she had right now.

Regardless, she walked through the door just before the bell rang and found a free seat.

As Ms. Norbury started calling roll, Cady mostly tuned out, just listening for her name, but when one boy interrupted the rhythm of last-name-first-name-here, rinse and repeat, she couldn’t help but actually pay attention.

“Also, I’m going by Kevin this year.” Okay, maybe she should have just stuck with not listening.

“Great, me too,” Ms. Norbury replied, “This is AP Calculus, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. If any of you would like to join our Mathletes team, Kevin, here, is the man to see.”

Or maybe she should have paid more attention to this guy from the start. Mathletes? _Super_ cool.

“Aight, so we need four people to compete, and state championships is in Winnetka this year, so things will be turnt up! So, holla at your boy if you’re DT function.” Cady wasn’t entirely sure what all of those words meant, but she got the gist of it. She’d talk to Kevin about Mathletes after class, once she figured out if high school math classes lined up right with her homeschool math.

Maybe this would be her place, doing the thing she loved with a group of people who could maybe even be her friends, starting today.

\---------------

Math, as it turned out, was _exactly_ the same. She soaked up everything Ms. Norbury said and spit the answers back at her as quickly as she could, which she was happy to see was pretty fast after all. She felt more comfortable sitting in that uncomfortable desk solving problems than she had since boarding the plane in Kenya.

And if she bit back a cheeky grin and felt her ears burning when Kevin responded to her third right answer in a row with a “ _Damn_ girl” and a considering look… well, that’s no one’s business but her’s.

Once the lunch bell rang, though, the comfortable confidence she’d regained began to slip away again, but she held on to it tightly as she spotted Kevin heading out the door, and hurried after him.

“Kevin!” she called once she was only a few feet away from him. He turned at his name, and she saw the recognition in his eyes. Cady realized she didn’t really know what to say from there. “Um, I’m Cady. You’re… in charge of the Mathletes, right?”

Even though he tried to play it cool, Cady could see Kevin’s eyes light up at the mention of the team. “Yeah, you know it! Our crew is the chillest in school. Why do you ask, Africa? You want in?” He seemed excited, and Cady was happy to let his mood brighten hers too.

“ _Yes!_ I mean, uh, yeah, I _love_ math. Being on the Mathletes sounds so cool!”

Kevin grinned at her excitement, but after a second his smile faltered. “Are you sure about this? A lot of this school thinks of joining the Mathletes as social suicide.” Cady’s eyes widened a little at his warning. “No offense, but if you’re gonna drop out two weeks in cause your friends won’t talk to you anymore, it’d probably be best if you just didn’t join.” He looked at her somewhat doubtfully, but she just mustered up another sunny grin.

“I can take it,” her grin fell slightly, “It’s not like I really have any friends yet anyway. But I won’t let you down! We’ll get to state championships, and we’ll _win_ in _Win_ nipeg.”

He chuckled a bit at her pun, “It’s _Winnetka_ , Africa, but hell yeah we will! Now normally I’d test you to see if your skills are good enough to roll with us, but after class today, I can already tell - your skills are dope! All that’s left is to introduce you to the rest of the crew. You wanna eat lunch with us?”

“Sure! And thanks Kevin.”

Kevin seemed a bit surprised by her gratitude. “For what?”

Cady figured that was a good question. For being nice to her, unlike just about everyone else so far? For warning her of the social repercussions, and not just assuming she knew how things work here? For inviting her to sit with him after she told him she didn’t have anyone else? For all of those things? She wasn’t really sure, but Kevin was waiting for an answer, so she smiled again. “For giving me a chance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know it's short, but let me know what you think please! i'm really not sure if i've got their characters down yet and i'd hate to write a whole fic with bad characterization
> 
> my mean girls tumblr is still brand new so it has all of one post but it's [here](http://www.yoyomathletes.tumblr.com)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahh writing rowan and marwan is simultaneously my favorite and my least favorite thing cause with the tiny amount of canon content (and the practically non-existant amount of fan content) for them i practically have to come up with all their characterization myself so sorry if it seems odd!

Cady wasn’t sure what to say.

She had said the wrong thing so many times today already, and she didn’t want this to end up the way those conversations had. She knew - or at least, she hoped - that she’d said the right things to Kevin, but she didn’t understand how what she said to him was any different from what she’d said to anyone else today. Was it the slight hesitance? No, that had been there most of the day, since she was practically scorned pretty much every time she opened her mouth. The enthusiasm she spoke with, once she was talking about math? That didn’t fit either, she’d been just as enthusiastic when she first arrived. Whatever it was, she couldn’t place her finger on it.

Maybe it wasn’t her at all. Maybe it was something about Kevin?

Well, that wouldn’t help her with this either. She had no way of knowing if these boys were anything like Kevin anyway, aside from the whole Mathletes thing of course. Like it or not, she was going in blind, hoping for the umpteenth time that day that the people staring at her would accept her.

Wait a minute. Staring?

_Shoot!_ How long had she been standing there zoning out? Based on the way the two boys seemed to be sizing her up but not yet giving her odd looks for standing stock still next to their table, it couldn’t have been too long. But that didn’t change the fact that she had no clue how she was supposed to break the silence. Luckily for Cady, Kevin chose that moment to introduce her.

“Yo Mathletes, this is Cady, she just moved here from Africa. She’s in my calc class, and she’s got _mad_ schquillz.” She saw one of the boys roll his eyes at whatever “schquillz” was, but she decided not to ask. The other boy spoke up anyway, so Cady shifted her attention to him.

“I’m Rowan, and this is Marwan,” he smiled sunnily at her.

“It’s nice to see a fresh face, especially since the one we usually see is Kevin’s,” the first boy - Marwan, she mentally corrected herself - added on, Kevin huffing back at him.

“Aight, I’m gonna go grab lunch,” Kevin said, bringing Cady’s attention back to him, “You coming, Africa?”

Cady eyed the new boys - well technically _she_ was the new one, but they were new to _her_ \- and for a split second she debated staying with them and not wasting food by eating the sandwich she already had versus going with Kevin and getting extra food she didn’t need just to avoid any awkward silences between her and the others. Realizing the answer was obvious if she actually wanted to have these people as her first friends at this school, she shook her head.

“I’m good! I brought a sandwich,” she said, swinging her bag around and taking out her sandwich as if to prove the point.

Kevin chuckled a bit as she held up her prize. “Cool, cool. Be back in a few, so,” he looked at Rowan and Marwan with a slightly crooked grin, “don’t scare her off, guys.”

And then he was off. And Cady was alone again. Well not _alone_ alone, but it felt like that anyway.

Regardless of how she felt, Cady smiled at the two boys across from her again as she sat down and started unwrapping her sandwich.

“So, Africa, huh?” It was Marwan that asked, a curious look in his eye. “What country are you from?”

“We lived in Kenya, on the Savannah.” Cady’s eyes softened a bit at the thought of home. Even if she didn’t live there anymore, even if she was an entire ocean away, it was still her home. She didn’t know if that would ever change, and she wasn’t really sure if she wanted it to. Sure, fitting in here and finding people she felt like she belonged with would be _amazing,_ but would it really be worth it if it meant forgetting her roots, betraying where she came from? She couldn’t say.

“I bet it’s a lot different from here, right?” Rowan added with a wry tilt to his mouth. “Not as much industrialization and all.”

“Yeah, no, it’s… nothing like here. I mean, you’re right about the industrial thing - the air is cleaner and you aren’t always walking on concrete - but it's more than that. It's quieter, too. Not like an eerie quiet though, more like you can actually hear the birds and the crickets, not just the cars and the people. There were _so_ many fewer people there. It’s like there you had miles to myself, but here you can never really get away from everyone. And there’s so many weird rules and codes here too, like you can’t just sit in an empty seat, cause every seat is _someone else’s_ seat, and people won’t actually give you directions or help you find where you’re supposed to go, so you’re just supposed to wander around and hope you’re going in the right direction,” she sighed, “At least math is always the same,” she finished with an small apologetic smile, realizing she was really starting to rant at them.

“Damn, Africa.” She jumped - when did Kevin get back? How into her rant did she get that she didn’t even notice him sit down _right next to her?_ “This school has _not_ been nice to you, has it? I mean, I know they’re not gonna let you sit in someone else’s spot, but they can’t really expect you to just _know_ that.”

“Chill, Kev. We already knew most of the people here are assholes, this really shouldn’t surprise you,” Marwan tried to placate his friend, eyebrows raised at his indignance.

“Yeah, I mean it’s shitty, but kinda expected?” Rowan said, though it came out almost like a question.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, running his hand through his hair as he talked, “it’s just not fair to Cady. They can’t expect a girl who’s always been homeschooled in _Africa_ to know how we chill here, you know?”

“It’s okay!” Cady plastered on another of her brightest smiles, not yet quite willing to admit - even to herself - that it really, really wasn’t. “I’ll be fine, I think I’m even starting to get a hang of the way they numbered the rooms!”

“Yo, you just tell us if you need anything, okay Africa?" Kevin said seriously. "You’re a Mathlete now, we got your back.”

“Thanks Kevin,” and this time the smile wasn’t forced in the slightest. “That reminds me though, they wouldn’t let me go during class earlier, so where’s the bathroom?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and there's chapter two! next up is lunch part two, and cady going to the bathroom is going to bring about the introduction of a pair of chaotic gays, so we'll see how that goes
> 
> thanks for reading, and feedback is much appreciated! my mean girls tumblr is [here](http://www.yoyomathletes.tumblr.com)


End file.
